


I Promise

by smug_albatross



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Space Flight, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, based on alchemy's "Calling Home"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-07-28 23:46:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16252262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smug_albatross/pseuds/smug_albatross
Summary: The world is mourning and Stiles is breaking.





	1. Nothing More

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Calling Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/523189) by [alchemy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemy/pseuds/alchemy). 



_Spring, 1962_  
  
“You ready for this?”  
  
They’re standing in Stiles’s living room, dressed to the eights — the nines would be excessive, and funerals are a sober occasion.  
  
It’s not really a funeral. Not yet, anyway. That’ll come later, with awards and speeches and a flag over an empty coffin. But this is the first step, and a dress code is a dress code.  
  
Stiles is so very far from ‘ready for this’. It feels like giving up, and Stiles had promised (once, in the backseat of Derek’s Corvette with half a bottle of whiskey and a river full of tears between them) to never give up on Derek, no matter what. And here he is, doing exactly that, breaking promises he swore to keep.  
  
Some tiny, vindictive part of him, the part that lashes out when its looked at wrong, like an angry drunk in a Missouri bar, says _good_. Derek broke his promise when he didn’t come home, it was only fair if Stiles got to break one too.  
  
The rest of him just howls.  
  
Stiles gives voice to none of this, avoiding Scott’s warm brown eyes as he nods. He is not ready, but it must be done.  
  
Nobody else can be allowed to face the same fate. Stiles will not allow Derek to be swept under the bureaucratic rug.  
  
He wonders if he can send a drink up to heaven.

* * *

 

The meeting with Harris is as terrible as Stiles predicted. He does, however, manage not to murder Harris on the spot, and while he doesn’t get an apology out of him, the idea of a protocol change is thrown around.  
  
Scott jumps on it like a bloodhound. Lahey puts his angel face to good use and make supportive noises. Stiles nods at appropriate intervals, but office politics are at play here and the only aspect of it Stiles has ever mastered is the art of not getting fired.  
  
Harris’s expression when Scott finally backs him into a corner is almost worth not murdering him. “Fine,” he snaps. “I’ll draft a proposal for committee review. Now for the love of God, _get the hell out of my office.”_  
  
Even Stiles can recognize when a bone’s been sucked dry, so he follows Scott and Lahey out of the office.  
  
“Stilinski.”  
  
Stiles stops. Scott and Lahey stop too, but Harris shoos them away. Lahey scuttles away like a frightened rabbit. Scott lingers just long enough to treat Stiles to a full view of his puppy dog eyes, then disappears into the hall when Harris barks at him.  
  
Stiles doesn’t turn around to face Harris until he’s sure Harris is sitting down again. “What?”  
  
Harris’s face is even more unpleasant than usual. “I hope your _personal investment_ in Major Hale isn’t coloring your decisions, Stilinski.”  
  
For a moment, Stiles is too furious to react properly. Then, suddenly, he’s too furious to _not_. “A good man — a good _astronaut_ is dead,” he spits. “I said I’d ruin you, Harris. Here’s your chance to avoid that.” He leans forward, his knuckles going white as he grips the edge of Harris’s desk. “Don’t fuck it up.”  
  
He’s gone before Harris can reply, leaving the room in a swirl of black coat and radiant fury. Scott and Lahey are waiting for him partway down the hall. Lahey’s face is a picture of artless confusion. Scott looks more worried than usual, which is an impressive feat, especially these days.  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
Stiles shrugs off Scott’s hand. “Fine.” He doesn’t smile, but his mouth twitches into something like grim satisfaction. “Just reminding him where we stood.”  
  
Lahey looks impressed. “You really meant it?”  
  
“I keep my promises,” Stiles says, with enough finality that neither of them say anything more.

* * *

 

His dad doesn’t call that night, even though he promised. What he does do, though, is knock on the door just after sunset. Stiles opens the door to see him standing on the threshold, sans his official Sheriffing Jacket, and pulls him into a hug.  
  
“I’m so sorry, son,” he whispers.  
  
Stiles muffles a sob against his shoulder.  
  
Eventually his dad pulls away, still holding him by the shoulders. “I brought curly fries.”  
  
Stiles doesn’t laugh, but he smiles. It feels like his face is cracking in half and it feels like betrayal, but he smiles. Just for a moment.  
  
The curly fries are too salty. Stiles eats them all anyway.

* * *

 

“How did you do it?”  
  
His dad looks up from his whiskey. “Do what?”  
  
Stiles doesn’t answer right away, just keep staring at the ceiling. When he speaks, its still not an answer. “I haven’t heard his voice in three days,” he says. _And I never will again._  
  
It’s the ‘never again’ part that really gets him.  
  
“I keep running into things he left behind,” he continues. “You know he didn’t put his shirt away? The last night?” A sob works its way out of his throat. He tries to choke it back down, with limited success. “It’s just. Sitting there. On top of the dresser.”  
  
His dad takes another drink of whiskey. “Leave it there,” he says, and his voice is low and raw. “Leave it where it is and find somewhere else to sleep.”  
  
He doesn’t need to say anything else. Stiles knows his father hasn’t touched the main bedroom in his house since Stiles’s mother died. He also knows the room he sleeps in now used to be her study.  
  
His dad stays the night and leaves in the morning. Stiles spends the rest of the day taking his advice.  
  
He’d never realized just how many books Derek left around the house.

* * *

 

It’s been six days since Stiles last heard Derek’s voice, and the funeral is here. The real funeral, this time — with the awards and speeches. There’s even a flag over the coffin.  
  
Someone passes him the microphone and it’s his turn to speak. There’s a part of him that appreciates the irony of a funeral big enough to need a microphone for Derek Hale — he hated crowds with a passion.  
  
Stiles says as much to the gathered crowd and gets a few laughs in return. He can almost, almost hear Derek’s snort somewhere in the audience.  
  
“I met Derek two years ago,” he says, because that seems important. “We hated each other on sight and got into a shouting match. Then we both went into work the next day and realized what a terrible, terrible mistake we’d made.”  
  
Someone chuckles. “Thank you, Scott,” Stiles says, then continues. “So we learned to put up with each other. That took a few months. Then we ran into each other outside of work again, and…somehow, by the end of the night, we ended up friends. I’m still not sure how that happened.”  
  
He took a deep breath. “But I think it had something to do with…how honest he was. Derek wasn’t a people person, but he never pretended to be. He knew where he fit in life and never tried to convince anyone that he fit somewhere else. And I think that translated into the way he…was. He has — he had a certain gravity about him. When he spoke, you sat up and listened, you believed him. When he made a promise…” His voice cracked. He swallowed and started over. “When he made a promise, you knew he’d keep it. Come hell or high water, nothing would stop it.”  
  
“So when I say Derek Hale promised me he’d come back, I want you all to understand how — how badly things must have gone up there for us to be here today.”  
  
He doesn’t go into any more detail on that front. Even if Harris is in the crowd somewhere, airing vendettas at a funeral is bad form.  
  
When he’s done speaking, he finds Harris staring at him.  
  
He looks almost afraid.  
  
The tiny vindictive part of Stiles grows.

Allison finds him after the funeral. She hugs him and doesn’t let go until he promises to call them over the weekend. There are tears in her eyes as she squeezes his hand.  
  
“That was a beautiful speech,” she says. “I’m glad you were here to give it.”  
  
For a solid thirty seconds, Stiles has no idea what she means. Then he realizes that he hasn’t been to work since Derek…since they lost contact with Derek, except to threaten Harris’s career, and he’s been a grieving wreck both times.  
  
Conclusions have apparently been drawn from this. Stiles refuses to admit they were right to be worried, if only for a brief moment on the first night, when he’d found himself alone with a bottle of whiskey and Derek’s service sidearm. He’d finished his drink and thrown away the bullets, crawling into bed with another promise to keep — this time to himself.  
  
He gives voice to none of this and he smiles unsteadily.

* * *

 

Stiles does not call on Saturday. He has the gun out again — no bullets, they’re still lying in trash outside — tracing his fingers over the grip. If he closes his eyes, he can picture the way it would fit into Derek’s hand.  
  
He promises himself he’ll get rid of it on Monday. Of all the memories he has of Derek, this is their unhealthiest carrier.  
  
Also, if Scott drops by and sees him like this, he’ll never hear the end of it. So he’ll turn it in to the proper whoever. For now, though, he puts it back in its locked box under their bed (just Derek’s bed, now — Stiles has moved permanently to the couch) and leaves the room.  
  
He makes some tea and goes to sleep.

* * *

 

When he wakes up, the phone is ringing.  
  
It’s 0134, so he doesn’t pick up.

* * *

When he wakes up again, the sun is up and the phone is still ringing.  
  
This time, he picks up.


	2. Drifting, Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rockets are not responding, but Major Hale is not done dying.

_Spring, 1962_  
  
“Tell Stiles — I love him.”  
  
It’s the last message Derek sends before the communications array fries completely.  
  
Most of him is glad. The likelihood of this working is astronomical (heh) and he doesn’t want Stiles’s last memory of him to be him burning to a crisp on re-entry. The rest of him — the small and selfish part that Derek tries to pretend doesn’t exist — cries out at the loss of contact. He is terrified, and he wants the comfort of Stiles’s presence.  
  
“He knows,” Derek whispers to himself. “He knows.”  
  
That will have to be enough.  
  
It is not enough.  
  
Derek Hale is a good pilot, but a manual re-entry takes more than good. Manual re-entry takes best damn pilot who ever lived and that is not Derek Hale.  
  
His skin blisters with heat as the capsule’s windshield is covered by blue and orange. Everything burns and he can’t stop the scream from ripping its way out of his throat.  
  
The capsule rattles dangerously as Derek forces it through the atmosphere. Something flies off and more alarms sound, but Derek can still breathe, for the most part. He’s almost out of O2 but _not quite_  — and _not quite_ can make all the difference.  
  
(It occurs to him that if he survives this, Stiles will never let him go into space again, and he laughs a little brokenly.)  
  
(He’d give up stars and sunrise both to hold Stiles in his arms one more time.)

* * *

He’d told CAPCOM that manual wouldn’t work. He’s not wrong, but he’s not exactly right either.  
  
He’s managed to get in-atmo without immolating. Unfortunately, he’s now free-falling from a height somewhere north of Everest and the only reason the cold and wind haven’t killed him yet is his space suit.  
  
The part of his mind that sounds like Stiles starts running numbers. Terminal velocity of a human — fifty-three meters per second. Atmospheric entry on Earth happens at the Kármán line, about a hundred kilometers up.  
  
That’s about half an hour of free-falling before he hits the water and turns into, as Stiles would put it, an “All-American pancake”.  
  
Fine. Half an hour of tumbling through the air in a metal capsule to come up with a way not to die. He can do that (he cannot do that, he’s going to die here and he’s never going to see Stiles again).  
  
Derek takes a deep breath and wastes one of his precious minutes staving off a panic attack.  
  
_Focus_. What does he have to work with?  
  
He has tools for cutting and welding. There’s a parachute attached to the capsule. Unless it fell off, it hasn’t deployed yet.  
  
If it deploys, he’ll live. If it doesn’t, he’ll die. He has half an hour.

* * *

Derek has ten minutes left.  
  
He’s trying desperately not to cry. He wants Stiles to be here so badly it _hurts_ , and the guilt of it hurts even more.  
  
He has one last idea to try, and it’s as likely to kill him as the impact.  
  
Derek prays to whoever cares to listen and cuts into the walls of the re-entry capsule. This is not what the tools are for, but Derek has them and he’s going to use them however he can.  
  
The unfurling of the parachutes slams his heart into his skull, and he loses consciousness.

* * *

Derek wakes up, much to his surprise, and is not in pain. His first assumption is that he’s dead, and somehow managed to get himself into Heaven (Hell is supposed to hurt, after all) but then he looks around and realizes that no, he’s definitely not in Heaven. He’s somewhere in the Pacific, and he’s quickly losing the ability to breathe.  
  
Spacesuits are space-proof, but they’re not crash-proof - or, for that matter, waterproof. At least not after crashes. His helmet is quickly filling up with water, and the weight of the waterlogged parachute is dragging him down.  
  
He swallows a mouthful of seawater as he struggles to free himself of the parachute. There’s no sign of the capsule. Maybe it shattered on impact, maybe it drifted away. He doesn’t know.  
  
Derek fights his way free and rips his helmet off, treading water as he gulps down fresh air. When his head stops spinning and his stomach stops threatening to revolt, he looks around.  
  
What remains of the capsule is floating maybe fifty meters away — by some miracle, the flotation devices deployed without incident.  
  
His suit is waterlogged and heavy, but Derek has a promise to keep, so he hauls himself onto his new raft with a grunt of effort. He flops heavily over the side, and he’s pretty sure he can hear Stiles laughing at him.  
  
For a moment, Derek just lays there, listening to the memory of Stiles’s voice.  
  
_Promise me._  
  
His lips are cracked and parched. “I promise.”  
  
Nobody finds him on the first day.

* * *

On the second day, he rips up part of his spacesuit to construct a water filter from the capsule’s debris. NASA will probably make him pay for it, but he’s willing to live in debt if it means not dying of thirst. _Especially_ not when surrounded by water. That’s just embarrassing.  
  
He leans over the side to fill up his filter. It won’t give him much, not quickly, but it will keep alive. For now, at least. But it’s been a day, now, since he landed, and someone will find him soon. He’s sure of it. He’s not sure where he is, exactly — somewhere in the Pacific, probably. Somewhere between Hawaii and Japan, at roughly the same…  
  
It takes him a moment to remember the difference between latitude and longitude. That spooks him more than anything.  
  
He shivers and pulls the rest of his suit tightly around him. “You’d better find me, Stiles,” he whispers. He does not say _please_ , but he’s pretty sure it’s implied.  
  
Nobody finds him on the second day.

* * *

On the third day, he screams himself awake from a nightmare about Stiles, with galaxies in his eyes and blackness pouring from his mouth, holding Derek down as he burned. He reminds himself of what he knows — that Stiles would never hurt him, that dreams are not reality, and that he is not going to die here.  
  
The last one rings hollow. Derek takes a mouthful of water from his filter — he can still taste a bit of salt, but it’s better than nothing — and sets to work polishing a piece of scrap metal. He doesn’t have a signal flare.  
  
Nobody finds him on the third day.

* * *

On the fourth day, Derek hurts so badly he can barely move. He hasn’t felt hungry since he crashed, but he hasn’t eaten either. Hasn’t had enough water. Is probably injured in ways he won’t even know about until someone gets him to a hospital (or a morgue, the nasty voice in the back of his mind says).  
  
His body is getting pretty tired of it, apparently. He curls up in a shaded corner of the capsule and tries, unsuccessfully to sleep, in too much pain to care if he’ll wake up.  
  
Nobody finds him on the fourth day.

* * *

On the fifth day, he can move again. He feels…better. More alert. It’s probably a bad sign, but Derek isn’t a doctor so he pushes it out of his mind. Chills crawl over his skin, but he grits his teeth and pushes through it — he has work to do if he wants to survive.  
  
He spends most of the day picking threads from his astronaut suit and trying to catch fish. He catches what _might_ be a sardine and retreats into the scant shade to inspect it. Upon closer inspection, it’s probably not a sardine — aquatic fauna aren’t his specialty, though, so he could be wrong.  
  
“That’s disgusting,” he mutters. Then he bites off the head, almost chokes on the skull, and spits it overboard. On the bright side, the fish is no longer flopping around. On the downside, the shady part of the capsule is now covered in fish blood, because apparently fish also have some pretty important arteries in the neck.  
  
He eats it anyway. It’s disgusting and the best thing he’s ever tasted. The scales stuck in his throat like popcorn kernels and he takes a few moments to laugh at the fact that “kernel” and “colonel” are pronounced the same way. He’s not sure why that’s funny.  
  
Nobody finds him on the fifth day.

* * *

On the sixth day, when Derek is fishing, he sees a dark shape on the horizon. He scrambles to his feet and for a heart-stopping moment he teeters dangerously over the edge of the capsule and nearly plunges into the water below. His hand shoots out and he catches himself — cuts his hand open on the sharp edge of the capsule, but catches himself. In his other hand, he’s gripping the polished metal from the third day. He raises it to the sun and tilts it until it catches the light.  
  
Three short flashes. Three long flashes. Three short flashes. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.  
  
The dark speck gets closer. Anxiety suddenly grips Derek like a vice — what if they’re pirates? Russians? What if they’re not here to take him home?  
  
It’s too late now, they’re already seen him. As the ship approaches, Derek’s vision — which has been suspiciously fuzzy ever since he woke up — warps and tilts alarmingly. He pitches forward, overcorrects, and lands flat on his back, staring up at the sky.  
  
Strong hands are hauling him upright and voices he doesn’t recognize are speaking, asking questions in a language he doesn’t understand but is probably Japanese.  
  
_At least they’re not Russians,_ he thinks, and lets the blackness consume him.  
  
He is so, so very tired.

* * *

When he wakes up, he is in a hospital somewhere. He’s not sure where — all hospitals look essentially the same. He looks around, and slowly the pieces of the puzzle slide together. He is in a _Japanese_ hospital, which is better than a Russian one and worse than an American one.  
  
Carefully, he raises himself up on his elbows and stares around. There is no clock, no calendar, and nobody present. For a fleeting moment, he entertains the notion of a two-century coma — like something out of a bad science fiction novel — before dismissing it. In two hundred years, they will have figured out how to make mattresses that don’t squeak when you move.  
  
“Hello?” he calls out. Well, he tries to. His throat feels like sandpaper, and the ‘hello’ comes out as a rasp.  
  
It does the trick. A woman in a nursing uniform enters the room. Derek catches the flicker of surprise that flickers across her face for just a moment before she smiles again.  
  
Her English is heavily accented, but it’s better than Derek’s Japanese. Between the two of them and some gesturing, Derek figures out the name of the hospital he’s in (he can’t pronounce it, but if someone says the name it he’ll recognize it). Fishermen had found him and brought him in yesterday.  
  
Five, six…seven days.  
  
Seven days.  
  
Seven days since he’s heard Stiles’s voice. Since Derek told him he loved him. Since —  
  
_Oh God, Stiles thought he was dead._  
  
_Oh God._  
  
“I need to call — ” His voice catches. He’s already outed himself (and Stiles, but they were an open secret anyway) to NASA, but this? This is different. Here, he can die so easily, and there will be nothing he can do. The chances of this are limited, but far from remote, and Derek…Derek is afraid. He’s never been quite so defenseless before.  
  
But he needs to hear Stiles’s voice — really hear it, not just imagine it drifting toward him on the wind.  
  
The nurse is studying him as he agonizes. Maybe she takes pity on him, or maybe she just misunderstands. “A friend?”  
  
Either way, Derek seizes it like a lifeline. “Yes. My friend.”  
  
She leaves. Other nurses come in and out — two of them, one during the day and one at night — to check the equipment and do other medical things. Derek isn’t quite sure — he’s a pilot, not a doctor. He does learn, from the day nurse (who speaks nearly fluent English), what his injuries are. His left leg is broken (which explains the cast), as are two of his ribs, and his organs were bruised by the crash. He also has (or _had,_ more likely, since they let him nap) a concussion, which seems comically unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The myriad of cuts and scrapes have gathered up multiple infections, but they aren't chopping off limbs so he forces himself not to worry about it. There are a few other things wrong with him that Derek doesn't quite comprehend, but he gathers that starvation and dehydration are the main cause of him feeling terrible.  
  
Derek doesn’t see the first nurse again that day. Eventually, he falls asleep.

* * *

He wakes up to someone changing his IV bag. It’s the nurse from yesterday. She looks down at him and smiles when she sees he’s awake. She takes a picture from her pocket and shows it to him. It’s a polaroid, worn around the edges, of the nurse and another woman with their arms around each other.  
  
“Ichiko,” she said, tapping the second woman. “My friend.” She smiled. “I try and bring a phone.”  
  
Derek swallowed hard. “Thank you.”  
  
She comes back later with a wheelchair. “No walking,” she orders, when he tries to protest.  
  
Derek is smart enough not to argue with the person who will let him talk to Stiles. He lets her help him into the wheelchair.

* * *

The first time Derek calls, he forgets about the time difference. When the phone stops ringing, his stomach twists so badly he almost vomits, and spends four hours calling every twenty minutes and worrying himself half to death.  
  
The nurse waits patiently, her hands folded in her lap. As Derek waits between calls, he finds out that her name is Setsuko. Her mother and sister died when Hiroshima was bombed. Her father died before she was born.  
  
In return, Derek tells her about his family. Not everything. Not even a lot. But enough for a small, sad smile to form on Setsuko’s face.  
  
The final time Derek calls, he’s still forgotten about the time difference but it’s morning in America now (or at least the part where Stiles lives) and someone picks up.  
  
“‘lo?”  
  
The sound of Stiles’s voice takes Derek’s breath away. He clamps a hand over his mouth to muffle a sob of relief. It takes a moment for him to be able to speak again, but — miracle of miracles — Stiles does not hang up.  
  
“Stiles?” he whispers, as soon as he can manage it.  
  
There’s a thud on the other end of the line, followed by a choked sob.  
  
Derek winces. “Stiles — ”  
  
_“You’re alive.”_ Stiles’s voice is raw and painful. “You’re alive — you’re _ali — ”_ Another sob. “I love you. _I love you.”_  
  
Derek’s voice cracks as he speaks. “I know. I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! Took me longer than I would have liked, but it's done. My boys get their happy ending.

**Author's Note:**

> I read alchemy's "Calling Home" and couldn't just leave it at that, so here we are.


End file.
